Writing a biography is like putting a puzzle together—or, as Pee Wee
Herman says, “Certain questions get answered. Others spring up. It’s like
unraveling a big cable knit sweater that someone keeps knitting and knitting
and knitting…” To give ten years to something is a daunting task, and yet
people do it all the time—to jobs, children, spouses, friends, art. The journey
of discovering someone’s life—someone’s mind—is, at turns, engaging and
intrusive, tedious and exhilarating. So that I might find myself on any given
day thinking, What does reading Moby Dick have to do with writing a
Larry Eigner biography?

The question then becomes how to talk about the poet’s work without
stressing CP too much. Eigner’s biography is interesting, yes. But what is more
interesting is how his body informs the work. A poet’s corporeal condition
always informs his or her writing, but in the work of a poet with CP, the
connection to the poetic movement is laid bare, and (due in no small part to
the simple difficulties of navigating an “abled” world) even intensified. This
can be a cause for excitement—or is a cause for excitement in the case of
Eigner. Particularly because Eigner’s poems were typed before computers, one
can see the skeleton, the underpinnings, of the connection between
soul/body/breath/poem.

The conversation reminds me of a performance I
saw in Ottawa through Louis Cabri and Rob Manery’s N400 Reading Series by
British sound poet Aaron Williamson, a writer who is deaf. To be able to
perform, he had to do an hour’s worth of vocal exercises beforehand, and the
act of performing sound poetry became as much a physical act as anything else.
How could it not?

I am very interested in seeing what becomes of
this project.

Brooklyn NY: From nonprofit art and publishing collective
Ugly Ducking Presse come two new gracefully-designed chapbooks: Ernst Herbeck’s
Everyone Has A Mouth (2012), translated from the German by Gary Sullivan, with contributions from Oya Ataman and Ekkehard Knörer, and Sandra
Liu’s On Poems On (2012). I’m fascinated by Herbeck’sEveryone Has A
Mouth, apparently the first collection of the late Austrian writer (1920-1991)
to appear in English in the United States. As Sullivan writes his short but
compelling introduction:

While working in a munitions factory in 1940, Herbeck reported the
feeling of animals or other people—often a girl—invading his body, controlling
his thoughts and actions. He was briefly institutionalized, released, and later
served for half a year in the military. He was hospitalized again in 1945 and
forced to endure shock treatment. He spent the rest of his adult life in mental
institutions, most of it at the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic near Vienna.

In the fall of 1960, the psychologist and writer Dr. Leo Navratil
(1921-2006), head clinician at Maria Gugging and a promoter of art brut,
met with Herbeck for the first time. Wanting to provide the patient with an
outlet for personal expression, Navratil gave Herbeck a blank postcard-sized
piece of Bristol board and a ballpoint pen ad asked him to write something on
the subject of “morning.” After a period of consideration, Herbeck wrote the first
poem in the present collection.

Navratil was struck by the results and continued to meet with Herbeck,
each time prompting him to write another poem, until the poet’s death 31 years
later on September 11, 1991.

For about a half-decade, I ran weekly poetry
workshops through Jack Purcell Community Centre for people living with mental
illness, and there are qualities here I recognize from the poems presented
during those days. There is a quiet, subtle essentialness to these
poems, if not a gentle urgency. Although I’m not sure why the translations are
presented so gracefully throughout the small collection, yet the originals
appear en masse at the back in a much smaller font, sometimes three toa page?

Yellow

Yellow is the sand of the earth

Yellow is the color of the bronze forests.

Yellow is the hearts of flowers.

Yellow are the asters.

Yellow is the meadow. of money.

The franc is yellow. — brunette.

i have seen a yellow franc.

yellow is for example my pencil. (Ernst Herbeck)

Seemingly a first chapbook by Sandra Liu, On
Poems On is constructed out of a series of meditations on light, and its
absence. An uneven little book, some of the pieces are tight, and some meander;
her strength comes from the tight lines, such as in the poem “Take a look at
this,” holding a line break as deliberately as a thought.

Take a look at this

The lyre of clothesline outside my window

vibrates slightly, silently. Typhoon #3 calmed.

The large white and crinkles shut in the window

across from me, probably a one-block distance away, billows;

rests; billows. A plastic bag; an apron, maybe a skirt;

a plastic bag. My glass acts like it’s melting.

An action figure in a floral print housedress

walks away from the market. Grocery bags included.

Headlights at sunset, doesn’t seem to apply to boats.

Fast cars pass the chinks between buildings.

A burst of kitchen steam. A flickering tv.

A woman, another one, a granddad moving around.

A t-shirt on a hanger drying inside.

A billowing apron hung out. (Sandra Liu)

Grand Rapids, MI: From horse less
press comes another new chapbook, this one from Seattle poet and musician
Rebecca Loudon, her TRISM(2012), a prose-poem sequence that weaves
through a narrative of bears and the divine. I’d be interested to hear some of
her thinking behind such a sequence. Is this a Victorian western about bears,
or something entirely other? Exactly what is the story, here?

The girls were named Alice the boys were named Jack. Their room was a
wheel on a ship. Approach cautiously. Rouge was the place they looked
for. Played wounded in battle. Trism Bear scouted the courtyard. Bears have no
patience with rhetoric. Drank up felt the beer rise. Alices disappeared in the
past making police work difficult. Took care at the conference of birds plague
masks unguents curious recipes. Alices lowered the shawls from their foreheads
under the influence of pebbles. Jacks leapt to their feet. Safety’s luxury came
late. Broken glass on the Marilyn Shrine oranges and pine a candle made from
human fat. The moon was down but there was enough light for horses to ford the
river. Cherished a secret grudge against breathing machines. Did not let Trism
Bear hear. Alices and Jacks were homeless and waiting for food. Desolation
Point. The difficult miracle of anvil wince and shit. They were what
was found there.

American poet Laura Mullen’s Enduring Freedom (Los Angeles CA: Seismicity Editions, 2012) is
a collection of prose poems exploring the ideas of the bride and the wedding,
and all that comes with it, admittedly an unusual book to be going through, in
the days leading up to my own wedding. In the titles of Mullen’s I’ve seen,
including Subject(University of California Press, 2005) and Dark Archive(University of California Press, 2011), each explore a different
idea from a series of directions to come, if not to a conclusion, a
multiplicity of conclusions, exhausting a subject akin to the book-length
explorations of poet Cole Swensen, if composed by, say, Lisa Robertson.

“The couple having a private moment.”

She should be seen being lifted out of sight: on a
high trapeze still rising, say, and swinging above the stage, hissing “I hate
you I hate you I hate you…” In the dimness far above she whispers spits and
mumbles, she shrieks and flings down into the pooled light on the floor the
various masks she’s been wearing: alternating “beautiful” (carefully made up)
faces with monster visages, so lipstick-y smiles flop down along with snarling
muzzles or gaping holes fenced with broken brownish fangs dripping reddish
froth… “I haaaaaattttteee you!” She trills it out, standing on one foot, still
in that silly bird costume they made her wear, singing it. And plop: the blond
wig tumbles to the ground and then the brunette wig and so does, shortly, the
silver mane and the nest of writhing snakes. I hate you, she thinks it
hard enough so that it seems to fill the shadowed space, as she hooks her knees
over the bar and swings, upside down, back and forth. “I h-aghydpn goooo” we
hear (but faintly) as she rips apart the frilled and feathered gown – dropping
fake breasts into the sawdust below, thump, floosh – and pulling the luscious
rubber ass-mask around and up over her face…

This collection of
essay-poems, subtitled “A Little Book of Mechanical Brides,” sweeps
through a range of possibilities, with titles such as “Pride Bride,” “Bride of
the Detail,” “Bride of the Lists,” “Bride of the Flaw,” “Bride of the New Dawn”
and “Bride of the Venue.” The book exists as a series of portraits, each
composed around another point-of-view. As she writes to open the poem “Bride of
the Dream of the Perfect Day”: “As if good weather meant, no, were
wedded bliss: a series of standard phrases or married words, conjugal felicity
for instance (for instance for instance). Dark clouds can swirl like
dirty tissue in an overflowing toilet somewhere else for all she cares but here
and now Fine is the only forecast.” The title of the collection intrigues: is
the “freedom” of marriage something akin to the Roman peace (Pax Romani) that
needs to be endured? Within the collection, she (the narrator) references
herself as an “oafish archivist,” suggesting more than a few things, including
the fact that the collection as a whole is built as a complex study, perhaps
before the author finalizes her own decision on the subject?

White Bride

Blank page. It’s this dress – I can’t breathe in it.
Deep flounces of colorless fabric mount as if trying to reset a clock, a wake,
our task to look back and not look back. Salt at the wrist – then up the arm to
the shoulder, all the way to the bitter white heart. Bandaged: existing as
erasure, I appear where I disappear. It’s a costume or an heirloom or it’s
both. It’s a copy: it’s unique. It will only be worn once, and then it was only
worn once: on the most important day of…. Then it’s listed among unclaimed
gowns at the cleaners or crushed into a corner of the thrift shop. “I pretended
I was in a play,” she confesses, speaking of her wedding, “I’d done theater – I
knew how to get through it.” Colorless scentless sift of time and this feeling
of connection to events we didn’t experience then this sense of being
disconnected from what in fact…. And elected – representative. “I wish I’d put
it on before and learned how to walk around in it.” Unmarked or almost: maybe a
smudge of dust or a faint smear of what looks like rust at the edge of – but
you’d have to know where to look. Because it cost too much to clean it.
“Regrets? I wish I’d known how hard my dress would be to move in…I would’ve
practiced.”

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Billie Livingstonis the award-winning author of three novels, a collection of short stories and a poetry book. Her latest novel, One Good Hustle, is about the daughter of two con artists, trying to figure out if she is fated to be a crook or if she's got a chance at something better. She lives in Vancouver with her husband, her god parents and a hairy butt-biting Afghan Hound named Rubin.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does
your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

Before Going Down Swinging, it didn’t seem possible for someone like me to have a
published book— I thought authors were born smoking pipes and pondering the
world from New England armchairs. Names like Random House were intimidating so
the process of working for years with a book in mind, circumventing obstacles,
and persevering until I actually had a contract in my hands proved to me that
anything is possible. With each
new book, though, I still have the feeling that the whole publishing process is
something akin to gator wrestling.

2
- How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or
non-fiction?

3 - How long does it take to start any particular
writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow
process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does
your work come out of copious notes?

It’s been different with each book. The
writing initially comes quickly because I don’t want to impose much in the way
of self-editing on a first draft. I try to write from the gut. No one’s going
to see it so I allow myself the weird and foolish and just hurl it all out on
the page. Then I go back and pull and twist and rewrite. It’s unusual for my
first draft to look close to its final shape.

4 - Where does a poem or prose usually begin for
you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger
project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

That has changed
with each book too. With my first
book, as I mentioned I started toying with characters and story in the form of
short narrative poems, but once I began the novel, I continued on in that way,
writing hundreds of pages and then changing my mind about point-of-view, and
rewriting with a more raw sense of where the nerves of the story were. With One Good Hustle, I started with
short stories in the voice of the narrator Sammie. I walked her through various situations to look at how she
operated until I felt ready to have her narrate a whole novel.

5
- Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the
sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I have a huge dread when it comes to
public readings and find it hard to write on a day that I know that I’ll have
to read. It’s a bit crazy because I often enjoy reading in public as I’m doing
it but I get terrible anxiety beforehand.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your
writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What
do you even think the current questions are?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer
being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of
the writer should be?

I think the
primary job of the writer is to tell a story. If you’re writing from your gut without filters — writing,
as they say, what you fear most — then your themes will occur naturally. To my mind, it’s a mistake to become so
entranced with one’s role as a writer that the novel becomes nothing but a
pulpit from which to preach particular themes and admonishments.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside
editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Working with a
good editor is essential. It’s
almost impossible to edit one’s self.
Like the reader, the writer needs someone who can ask difficult
questions. I’ve been incredibly
fortunate to work with some of the best.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not
necessarily given to you directly)?

The only way to get anything written is
the AIC method. (Ass In Chair)

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between
genres (poetry to fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

I guess it’s happened naturally. One form
inspires another. I write whatever I’m drawn to write, though sometimes,
writing itself feels like trying to yank veins out of my arm.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep,
or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

If I’m deep into
a book, I have a quota that I try to keep: Two pages per day. Enough that I feel I’ve accomplished
something and not so much that I feel daunted at the outset. I tend to begin my
days with tea and the news, answering emails. Then a walk to the beach and back.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn
or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Lately, I’ve been
reading peculiar news stories. They
are often filled with ordinary knuckleheads committing such desperate or
narcissistic acts that I’m thrown into a deep daydream, marvelling at the
avoidable and yet inevitable casualties involved. It can completely rejuvenate
my sense of wonder and sympathy which in turn fuels my writing.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

This is a
screaming cliché, but fresh cut grass.
It’s such a comforting smell. And it’s a goofy one for me because I grew
up mainly in apartment buildings.
Maybe it comes from a longing for my own backyard.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from
books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature,
music, science or visual art?

It’s hard not to be affected by what you
surround yourself with. I’m influenced by the storytelling of friends, by walks
through the supermarket or the park, by newspapers, television, road trips,
music, radio, podcasts, museums, graffiti — that’s why I think it’s important
to pay attention to one’s surroundings, to feed your brain with more than
fluff.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for
your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I like reading
those News of the Weird stories, mostly to remind me of the desperate and often
absurd actions of average people when cornered. But it’s anything and everything with me: really
corny fiction, dark and beautiful poetry, philosophy, mythology, theology, The Globe and Mail, The New York Post…

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet
done?

I hope to do more
visual art, work with my hands.
I’d like to learn how to make a book, how to weld, I’d like to learn
some simple carpentry.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to
attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have
ended up doing had you not been a writer?

When I was a kid I wanted to be a
veterinarian. Later I wanted to be a lawyer. I never went to creative writing school but I wish I’d gone
to law school or medical school.
It would be good to have that knowledge to use in my work.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing
something else?

I always wrote. When I was doing other
things I still wrote. Especially while I was employed in the most mind-numbing
of jobs, writing kept me sane. The surprise came when someone actually wanted
to publish the writing.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was
the last great film?

I recently saw Aberdeenwith Lena Headly and Stellan Skargård, It was riveting and terrible and, at times, painfully funny. The
performances are so good, the scenes so humbling and humiliating, you want to
cover your eyes.

20
- What are you currently working on?

I think it’s a novel but I’m not sure yet. I’ve written one long story about a
Catholic priest in rehab. Now I’ve
moved on to his sister who is obsessed with spiritualist churches, seeking
mediums who claim to talk with the dead, people who might be able to help her
find the voice that’s snuffed out of her life.

Each year, Arc Poetry Magazine honours Ottawa poets. Arc is proud to present the four 2012 finalists for the Archibald Lampman Award for best book of poetry by a National-Capital author.

The award is named in honour of Archibald Lampman (1861 – 1899), one of Canada’s finest nineteenth-century poets. Lampman moved to Ottawa in 1882, and much of his metaphysical nature poetry was inspired by the National Capital region.

Michael Blouin Wore Down Trust (Toronto; Pedlar Press, 2011)

rob mclennan Glengarry (Vancouver: TalonBooks, 2011)

Thelma Poirier Rock Creek Blues (Regina: Coteau Books, 2011)

Sandra Ridley Post-Apothecary (Toronto: Pedlar Press, 2011)

The award will be presented on October 24, 2012 at the Ottawa Book Awards.

Congratulations to all four finalists and their publishers, and many thanks to our 2012 judges.

For the two hundred and fifty-plus pages of the
journal, I’m a bit surprised at the sheer amount of writers I’ve not previously
heard of, a wide range of magnificent work by such as John Pluecker, Floyd
Salas, Lee-Ann Roripaugh, Judy Roitman, Eugene Rico and Clay Matthews, all new
discoveries, thanks to this issue. This is the benefit, I suppose, of a journal
that doesn’t consider the writers they publish for another issue or three. And
the bee images by Rebecca Szeto, “from the ongoing series Traces: Daily
Meditations on Just Beeing,” are quite stunning. Otherwise, it’s good to
see new work by familiar names such as Sarah Rosenthal, françois luong, and
Rebecca Loudon (a recent discovery).

Another particular highlight was the interview
Peta Rake conducted with Newfoundland-based photographer/performance artist Kay Burns, and her work The Other, a series of staged photographs of the
artist as female historical figures who lived their lives as men. Might this be
a touring work, perhaps? As Rake introduces the interview:

Dress is an exploration of not only self, but of the other. Enacting
these alternate identities has become a process of discovery for performance
based artist Kay Burns. The women Burns researched and portrayed in her
project, The Other, made a “pragmatic decision to dress as men in order
to move forward in a career path that would have been unacceptable for women at
that time.” And the women have such varieties of career; Margaret Ann Bulkley
as the military doctor and surgeon Dr. James Barry; Mary Charlene Parkhurst as
the stagecoach driver for Wells Fargo Charley Parkhurst; Charlotte O’Leary as
the zoo keeper and bear trainer Charlie O’Leary. What becomes integral to
Burns’ project is that the women she seeks to re-inhabit do not implement male
dress as one-off masquerade, but that they had lived their entire adult lives
as men, with their female genders only revealed posthumously.